The Gambler and the Goddess
by Jilly-chan
Summary: Alternate Reality. Duo and Dorothy meet over a poker game. How can their friendship bring them each to a point of reconciliation with their own pasts?


The Gambler and the Goddess  
by Jillian Storm  
  
(Disclaimer: This is pseudo-Alternate Reality. I think that Duo and   
Dorothy still had a lot of soul searching to do by the end of the   
series. Well, maybe you could argue that Duo didn't. But I think he's   
much more interesting if he does have a little angst to juggle. So   
while bits of this will sound very familiar, the reconciliation is set   
in an alternate universe--no Gundams here. Over the Rhine takes all   
the credit for the lyrics.)  
  
***  
Jack's Valentine  
Over the Rhine  
***  
  
*Help me. Spread my table. I've been tryin' but I'm just not able.   
There's so much left inside, so very much I've been trying to hide.   
Life gets pretty heavy and I wish it was light, but after all I love   
the night.*  
  
Gambling brings all sorts to the same small, sometimes green, table and   
asks that the participants take a chance. Ruthlessly conquer. Toy   
with fate. Play with destiny. Or turn the largest folly with their   
sacrificial hope. It's the players that come with an earnest gleam in   
their eye that always leave with the smallest purse, if they managed to   
salvage any of their hard-worked earnings at all.  
  
The players tonight were such a mix. The dealer came from out of   
state. He was a Chinese man with little to say besides announcing the   
levels of justice surrounding the play of the game. His slick, black   
hair was pulled back from his face in a criss-cross design that   
emphasized the sunset glow of his features. "Watch your cards,   
American," he hissed.  
  
The player opposite the Chinese man met the icy gaze with mock   
innocence.   
  
He shrugged, lifting not only his shoulders but the black, smooth shirt   
that he wore. The American wore only black and all black, which made   
him a rather interesting figure to watch in the dimmed lights of the   
gambling room. Across the table, and through the smoke of several   
cigars, the American's clearest feature was his disarming white grin.   
A pure expression contrasted with the sinister costume. The American   
pulled at the brim of his black hat. He looked like an experienced   
mobster settled into a western saloon to ruthlessly collect the   
farmer's property.  
  
Tapping his cards, the American answered, "Winning cards." His voice   
was playfully low, an octave that he would not normally speak in unless   
he was being playfully sinister or playfully romantic. Nothing about   
the American seemed less than light-hearted. "Got my eyes full of   
winning cards."  
  
"Let me see those." The Chinese man challenged moving more chips to   
the center pool. The game didn't really matter. The truest   
communication was between the American and the doll leaning against the   
bar counter. She had silver-blond hair that curled at the ends--just   
about the shoulders.   
  
Moon-beams really. The light of the moon reflecting off the cascade   
and reflecting off her silver-blue eyes. Her eyes were on the   
American. They had never met before. She was new to the city and the   
American had only lived in the neighborhood for a few weeks. They   
recognized the distance they shared from the others. Almost as if they   
had come together from the same distant haze that they were both trying   
to forget.  
  
Where he was black, she was silver. Her gown was a compromising dark   
grey, short in fabric but practical for her surroundings. While her   
every movement was beckoning, the men in the room were painfully aware   
she was a goddess. A goddess intent on only the American.  
  
It was hours before they spoke to each other, although they had been   
memorizing the other's voice from the first moments of the evening.   
Both the Goddess and the American trickster anticipated their demise   
was wrapped in the existence of the other. Fate had played her cards   
and they both had arrived to the same city, to the same saloon, on the   
same evening. The American may as well have been playing dice. She   
would have blown into his palm. And the numbers would have come up   
exactly the same.  
  
Death.  
  
*And there's that word again. I still hear it every now and again.*  
  
They lived together with the utmost of respect. Never touching, but   
playfully intimate. No one in the city would have believed that they   
were partners with such lofty ambitions. So they disguised themselves   
as lovers, but viewed each other with admiration and mutual loathing.   
Necessity overruled any other emotion.  
  
The American's name was Duo Maxwell. He had the good fortune of naming   
himself and had no obligation to any family nor any family to blame.   
Because of that total isolation, Duo dressed himself in black, but he   
robed his personality with jocularity. A tease and a reckless flirt,   
people might wonder how Dorothy tolerated her roommate.  
  
Dorothy Catalonia, for her own part, was cool and calculating in her   
soul.   
  
But she presented the world a silvery vixen with an overwhelming   
ability to gain social status. She earned favor with the social elite   
in life and gained the ear of several influential government officials.   
Dorothy declined from having intimate company for any of the   
gatherings, so several of the oblivious upper-crust were unaware that   
she might seek out a companion. Dorothy never spoke of him.  
  
They had met as strangers, but left that first evening blissfully   
interconnected. They met as Duo left the card game. He had lost,   
terribly. The Chinese man played the entire second half of the game   
with one eyebrow relentlessly arched as he scrutinized every passing   
card. One had to wonder that he didn't hurt himself by such diligence.   
He never troubled to breathe another word about injustice--as long as   
Duo was losing.  
  
The American walked to the bar. His walk was very important to him.   
The silver Goddess was not one to slide up to, still he was too self-  
proud to strut or simply gallivant. So, he adopted the worshipful step   
of a priest.   
  
A holy man who moved in the rhythm of the universe. Carefree, yet as   
connected with reality as any mortal could hope for. That was how Duo   
Maxwell walked.  
  
The Goddess watched. As she saw how she was appropriately worshipped,   
  
Dorothy spoke the first words. "I knew someone once, someone who   
walked like you."  
  
"Yeah," Duo breathed with the hints of laughter. Laughing like Loki,   
the trickster. "This fellow? Is he with you?"  
  
She let the silvery-gold strands slip like fingers down her shoulder   
blades as she studied the ceiling. It was grey and distant and   
cracked. So was her true story, but Dorothy merely said, "I've just   
met him." She was lying. Lying usually happens when something   
important hides. Duo knew this as well as Dorothy. They both had a   
lot to hide. Smiles and charms conceal a thousand wounds to everyone   
except their equal in motivation.  
  
"Clever." Duo scolded with a chuckle in his voice. It was low and   
playful when he continued, "We should know each other, since . . ."  
  
"We are so much identical." Dorothy stopped studying the ceiling and   
brought her head to gaze intently at the American next to her.  
  
"Practically cut from the same cloth." Duo laughed, shrugging and then   
swung his braid with the sway of his instinctual mirth. The braid was   
something to mention. The American had hair the color of caramel and   
almost stretched as long. The braid was neat and confined resting   
against the dark costume. Brown on black. The color of shadows and   
the hint of life. He hid his reasons for letting the hair grow.  
  
"Siblings." Dorothy suggested.  
  
"Lovers." He threw back his head and laughed like a fool before the   
moon. Loki was laughing. The fool felt remorse. So strangers meet   
sometimes and recognize a common thread. In this case, a thread of   
loneliness and false charm. The words they spoke to each other were   
more comfortable and more awkward than anything they had ever spoken in   
the slyness of ordinary conversation.  
  
*I breathe you 'cause you help me forget everything I don't know about   
love yet. I need you 'cause you help me forget, yeah, you help me   
forget.*  
  
A new city meant a new start for each of them. And they both knew what   
the other was looking for, rather, they knew that the other was   
searching and why they were searching. Any answers would come with   
time. Neither of them knew the answers. So they searched, and found a   
companion in the other. Or that was their noblest intention. The   
reader will notice that steel sharpens steel. And mischief conducts   
mischief most readily with a like-minded spirit.  
  
Duo Maxwell kept gambling. And Dorothy continued to lean against the   
bar. They were Loki and the Goddess again. More empowered than before   
with the other's determined disguise. Loki moved with disarming charm.   
The Goddess earned her place with strategic wisdom. They established   
their places in the new city, together.  
  
They had forgotten why they had left for a new start. They neglected   
the mistakes of the past. They sought out new beginnings in old   
patterns. Comfortable patterns of self-destruction.  
  
*I drink you 'cause you help me to see it's mostly myself that's   
killin' me. I think I have to, to help me forget everything I don't   
know about love yet.*  
  
Duo Maxwell had a story. He felt an obligation beyond his name. It   
was a duty he had to perform. Cheating, slyness, and cunning could not   
save his soul from that debt. Financial debt would not haunt the dark-  
dressed, priest-walking gambler. Destiny could.  
  
He almost walks like a holy man, because he almost became one. He was   
an orphan and thus earned the presumptuous privilege of naming himself.   
He found himself becoming Duo Maxwell, after the name of the church in   
which he found refuge. Father Maxwell's church. Sister Helen's   
church. His church.  
  
And he knew that he belonged there. He had committed his life to it.   
The only problem was that the young boy had often confused the church   
for God.   
  
And when you're looking for God, sometimes the church is the last place   
where you'll find him. He hadn't remembered Sister Helen gently   
tucking his nine-year old body under the thin sheet and itchy wool   
blanket. Saying as she gently made the covers the form of his shape,   
"Find God, Duo Maxwell.   
  
Remember, it's your heavenly Father that you're searching for when you   
read that Bible. Know religion, find God."  
  
Nine-year olds fall asleep before they comprehend much. Duo most of   
all because he knew that hope intrinsically. It was when he grew older   
that he forgot.  
  
Seventeen began the backsliding. Nineteen had marked his entrance into   
the seminary. When he was twenty he ran away. Duo refused to be   
trapped by religion. He saw no God in it. No God that could explain   
why Maxwell Church had been destroyed in a Christmas Eve bombing. For   
Duo Maxwell, God had burned with the building on that holiday. Now he   
had a fabricated name and a dark memory of it's origins, and he had no   
one to blame except himself.  
  
So he started gambling. At least then, he could blame the dealer.  
And he became the trickster, Loki. A shining smile and a helpful card   
in his boot. Untouchable and magic, with the ability to disappear one   
moment and reappear with the winning hand. No one suspected him of   
treachery, although everyone knew down deep that he was a sham. They   
loved him for it. They loved how he made them feel about themselves.   
They loved how he took their spirits and made them feel light for just   
a moment. Loki spun them fabulous tales and they could almost imagine   
that God did care from them.  
  
Loki chuckled at the irony. And he continually paid toward his debts,   
but he never had enough to find peace.  
  
*Someone said these were the best days, best days of our life. I   
suppose there could be worse ways, worse ways to learn to cry.*  
  
She had a history. A history of being an upper crust damsel with   
plenty of pampering and wit to gain her anything that pampering lacked.   
Her weakness was a desire for attention. Any attention, as long as it   
was the sort of recognition that she designed. The sophistication of   
her approach matured, improved, with time. But when she was a young   
teenager with grade-school cascades of endless hair and an elitist tilt   
to her chin, Dorothy found herself with a tutor. A tutor with four   
other pupils.  
  
All boys. One of the young men was her older brother, Treize, who had   
studied with the same instructor for several years. He'd poured   
himself into books of philosophy and war in an attempt to understand   
humanity. Two were her cousins, both with pale blond hair and blue   
eyes. Quatre was an innocent miniature of his older brother, Zechs.  
  
Here is the story. She was eighteen and she hated someone. His name   
was Heero Yuy and he was the moody protégé of a doctor. The doctor was   
amused by the idea of becoming an orphan's benefactor, so Heero Yuy   
attended classes with the most educated of private tutors. Dorothy was   
talented enough that her gender was a small obstacle into the class.   
Heero was low class and had disreputable motives for his acceptance   
into the program. They hated each other.  
  
As she hated Heero, she bit her tongue in frustration not to show her   
base disgrace. She should not admit that an enemy had shamed her into   
hatred. Her brother and Zechs were watching. She knew they might be   
aware of her, even if she sat quietly. She was certain that they   
ignored her, but patiently awaited her fatal slip so that they could   
exclude her before she could hope of their acceptance.  
  
Boils of anger hissed through her ears, but her face was peaceful,   
deliberate and calm. Her clear eyes were mischievous yet untroubled.   
She sat silently counting the ways she could be rid of Heero Yuy. The   
majority of points included his death.  
  
Death.  
  
Death moves people. Death takes them from here and puts them there.   
Wherever there is. And yet, something that was them stays. Here.   
Where living people are. So living people cry. Cry that what went   
there was there. And that what was here wasn't enough to complete   
them.  
  
Dorothy didn't think much on the subject beyond this. She was too   
young and distant to worry about death and the questions of an   
afterlife. She simply knew that she wanted to hurry the dark boy   
~there~ quickly.  
  
"I would like you if you were a corpse." She wrote on the top of her   
notes.   
  
She peered at the loathsome boy under her lashes. He glared back. Six   
weeks later, Quatre was taken to the hospital. He lay in a bed and   
hovered between here and there. Dorothy had never thought much of him   
before those moments of worry. And she did worry. She wasn't   
motionless, she simply had more emotions that she could ever show on   
her porcelain face.   
  
And she knew that she would crack if Quatre should split, half here and   
half there. Where ever there was. And she wondered about it. If   
things had been different! But as it was, she sat in the silver room   
and watched as Heero stepped in the doorway. She watched his mouth   
form words and saw his eyes suddenly shift to the floor. His face   
burned. Heero walked beyond her vision and fell to the floor in grief.  
  
Unaware of anything beyond that room, Dorothy felt a great coldness   
settle her heart. A bitterness. The silver glow of the room became   
her sacred chamber, the chair she sat on was a throne and she was the   
immortal Goddess.   
  
She would never fear death. Silver tears cut a path on her statuesque   
face, but her lips were soft, emotionless. Her eyes never blinked.   
Never betrayed a moment to here nor there.  
  
*And if these should be the last days, the last days for you and I, I   
suppose this is the best way, best way to say goodbye.*  
  
Routine is nice and easy for two people who attract each other like   
lonely, wandering magnets. Duo wore a white T-shirt once and Dorothy   
clasped her hands in mock delight. Dorothy pulled her hair up in a   
braid and Duo had insisted that they take pictures right then. Loki   
and the Goddess. Braided twins.  
  
As they watched each other wilt in the evening with unhappiness, they   
were wise enough to wonder what it was they lacked. The absence of   
something had to cause their sorrow, because they had everything else.   
Mutually, Duo and Dorothy looked to the other for the mysterious   
element. The missing puzzle piece.  
  
The denial of disillusionment.  
  
"What's missing?" Dorothy sat on one side of the candlelit table.   
They were in the kitchen of their apartment. After meeting at the   
saloon, they had pooled their resources to settle in a nicer home than   
either could afford on their own. Now they were using candles until   
they could afford lights.  
  
Duo leaned back in his chair. He'd finished everything on his plate.   
It hadn't been much, but Dorothy disguised chicken very well. They   
hardly believed that they ate the same thing almost everyday when she   
waved her hands over the kitchen preparations. After dinner, they both   
almost felt full and content enough to discuss unhappiness.  
  
"Dessert?" Duo smiled. It was a half-smile, he saved the fake   
exertion for the gambling table.  
  
"We tried that before." Dorothy held her porcelain face with her   
cupped palms. She watched the flickering flames and wondered at them.  
  
"I don't believe in God." His admission was blunt. And suddenly,   
without moving an inch or sharing any other form of recognition, they   
realized this was honesty.  
  
"I'm hateful." Dorothy moved her hands from her chin to pull the blond   
rainbow back from her face. "But, I think, I love you. That's   
something like loving myself, isn't it?"  
  
No one was answering questions tonight. Duo started to tip his chair   
back in a thoughtful rocking motion. Muttering his incomplete   
thoughts, "If God is love . . . if He is? If I can? Then do I?"  
  
*It snows in here. It snows forever, but there's no Christmas   
underneath this weather.*  
  
How could they explain the transformation? Had they undergone some   
trial together simply by living alone and watching the other's unspoken   
unhappiness?  
  
Peace is calm and it is relentless. Seeing it just out of their grasp,   
Loki and the Goddess had let their beliefs become counterfeit. They   
sat as the lofty gods of a bar and dreamed of humility in a cathedral.  
  
*When it blows here and gets real cold, I wanna trip myself and fall   
upon your fabulous sword and move here by the stained-glass window.   
Forget about the inside ghetto. Down here on the hardwood floor, the   
lines on the ceiling start to swim once more.*  
  
"Why are we so unhappy?" The American sat forward so that the chair   
cracked against the floor like a gunshot. "Isn't it Christmas Eve?   
Don't y'all ever ~celebrate~ Christmas over here?"  
  
Dorothy shrugged, broken from her musings of here and there. "I   
suppose there are some services in town." She seemed open to the   
possibilities.   
  
"Anything in particular that you'd like to suggest? . . ."  
  
Stepping up to the door, the twins shivered under their coats. It was   
snowing, but the elements had never caused them to shudder as much as   
the holy faces in the stain-glass windows.  
  
"I grew up in a church built somewhat like this." Duo pulled his arms   
tightly to himself. Then thinking better of it, he wrapped them around   
Dorothy. He accidentally let an affectionate grin wash his face like   
the evening snow.  
  
She felt the warm glow of his body for the few seconds before they   
slipped into the back rows of the congregation. Then the heat of the   
worship brought life back to her dulled senses. Instead of the ever-  
present and cool self-adoration, Dorothy recognized that this moment   
was far bigger than herself.  
  
Everyone, every one of them together, started to sing a carol. A hymn   
for Christmas. She fumbled through the pages of the songbook. Duo   
belted out the few words he remembered while she tried to find the   
title. His voice hesitated on a few uncertain phrases, but the   
trembling tenor of the quality remembered the passionate expression of   
song. A holy song.  
  
She studied the words and paired them with the musical notes. Her   
quivering voice whispered under Duo's regained confidence. The melody   
was familiar to her, but the verses went on and beyond what she had   
learned. The words continued and the complete meaning became clear.   
They went from here to there and were united with a new fullness.   
Completeness.  
  
*I breath you. I need you.*  
  
The two newcomers slipped out of the back before the rest. It was a   
first brave step. Something they might find courage to continue   
searching for . . . together.  
  
the end. 


End file.
